Jihadist flag: what Wikipedia removed

The jihadist flag combines the Black Standard and the Shahada and is used by Islamist and jihadist groups. As of October 6, 2023 the opening said “aside from Islamism, the flag has also been used by various terrorist organizations.” Today the opening lists al-Qaeda, al-Shabaab, the Taliban, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the al-Qassam Brigades and Jemaah Islamiyah as flag users without calling them terrorist organizations, though the word survives six times in the body. A reader today does not learn from the opening that the groups using this flag are described as terrorist organizations.

The word “terror” appeared 1 times in this article’s opening at its peak, in 6 October 2023. Today the opening carries none; the body carries 6. Checked against the full current article on 2026-08-01.

Where this comes from

We saved this article’s opening paragraph at 4 moments between 2015 and 2025. Everything below is Wikipedia’s own text, quoted from those saved copies. The interactive version, with every snapshot side by side and each removal marked in place, is at ilroot.com/case/jihadist-flag.

The tracked words, snapshot by snapshot

word	2015	2020	6 October 2023	2025
terror	0	0	1	0
militant	0	1	2	2
islamist	0	1	5	5
jihad	0	3	6	6

Counts are of the opening paragraph only, the part most readers, search engines and AI training sets ever quote.

What was taken out

• A parenthetical gloss of jihad as ‘holy war’ survives, attached to the same description of the flag’s use by Islamist organisations.
• The claim that usage was ‘widely adopted’ by Islamist groups and jihadists in the 1990s survives, softened to ‘is asserted to be adopted.’
• The statement that the flag has been used by various terrorist organizations is gone from the opening, replaced by a named list of groups without that label.

How it opened then, and now

2015 (revision 436946448):

Redirect to: Black Standard

2025 (revision 1297698377):

Flag used by various Islamist Groups Flag used by various Islamist organisations (since the late 1990s) with the white text of the Shahada on a black background The jihadist flag is a flag commonly used by various Islamist and Islamic fundamentalist movements as a symbol of jihad . It usually consists of the Black Standard with a white text of the Shahada (Islamic declaration of faith) emblazoned across it in Arabic calligraphy . Its usage is asserted to be adopted by Islamist groups and jihadists during the 1990s and early 2000s. Organizations who use jihadist flags include al-Qaeda , al-Shabaab , the Taliban , Palestinian Islamic Jihad , the al-Qassam Brigades and Jemaah Islamiyah . ^ Hami…

Related

• The drift report: what changed across all 61,944 watched articles
• The case file for this article, with every snapshot and every marked removal
• Who made the cuts: removals grouped by the account that made them
• The live article on Wikipedia

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